


There were grief and ruins (and you were the miracle)

by fandammit



Series: I exist in two places (here and where you are) [1]
Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Post Crooked Kingdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:50:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8194417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandammit/pseuds/fandammit
Summary: He stretched his hand out to her, fingers bare and waiting - a gentleman’s offer from a boy whose hands cradled knives and carved violence.Inej stared at the graceful taper of his fingers. He was still known as Dirtyhands, still went out with gloved hands and dark thoughts. Around her, though, the gloves remained on his desk or in his pocket. He would let his knuckles brush against the back of her hand as they walked, would skim his fingers lightly across her skin when saying goodbye. It felt like a small miracle every time.----------------Kaz and Inej, post-Crooked Kingdom





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the poem "The Song of Despair" by Pablo Neruda.

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

She said the words quietly, without a greeting to announce her presence. Not that she ever needed to - he always knew when she entered a room. Could feel the change in the air, the change in his breathing; an added layer of awareness that lit across his skin and skittered against his senses.

He turned to face her and nodded. She’d remained in the city over a month since her parents’ arrival. At least two and a half weeks longer than she’d needed to be prepared for her ship’s maiden voyage, by Specht’s estimation.

He thought: “I’m surprised you stayed this long.”

Which was true.

He said: “I’m glad you stayed this long.”

Which was honest.

His voice was still rough hewn stone scraping past the cruel set of of his mouth, but the words were soft at the edges, his gaze some near transparent hue of tender. He wondered if it was too much said out loud. He wondered at all he could add to it.

Inej blinked once, slow and surprised. There was more to savor about that look when it wasn’t connected to promised violence.

She was quiet just long enough for him to wonder if regret was a better word for what he should be feeling, to feel a warm flush begin to creep along the fitted collar of his suit. Then, a smile burst across her face, so complete that it seemed to inhabit her entire body. He could see her smile a thousand more times and never stop hoarding the shape of it.

“Thank you, Kaz,” she said softly, her reply incongruent to his words. He thought he might understand their meaning anyway: a ship made for war, the miracle of her parents, his promise of a shared mission.

And underneath it all: the admission of what she meant to him.

He nodded again and held her gaze, found himself unsure of what to say. A novel, unsteady feeling.

She was still perched on the inside ledge of his window, the Wraith ready to disappear. He didn’t want her to.

 

She reached over and wrapped her small hand in his, slipped off the window sill and padded to the chair in front of him. She let go of his hand as she sat down and pulled her legs up, crossed them and tucked her feet underneath her thighs.

“Still off to Ravka first?” He asked.

She nodded.

“I’ll sail with my parents and bring them back to the caravans.”

A warring look flashed across her face: joy and sorrow woven together, a contradictory truth he couldn’t quite tease apart.

He looked closely at her.

“Will you go with them? Visit your people?”

She sighed and shook her head, exhaustion suddenly draping across the lines of her body.

“There’s nothing for me there anymore. I’m not the girl I was when I was taken. I can never be her again.”

Her exhaustion sank into her bones and transformed into something heavier, more despairing. The life she’d once lived had, at times, been a blanket to keep her warm and a beacon to light her path; now it was an artifact trapped in amber - beautiful, but unreachable.

He saw the sorrow settle heavily on her and waded through his thoughts for something to say. But everything he could think of, everything he might say rang out as hollow or false. They had both had lives stolen from them, had both died and been reborn into nightmare creatures. Now they had a mission and a purpose apart from the day to day struggle to survive, but he couldn’t pretend that it was better than the lives they could of had.

There were no words to alleviate the sadness he saw written across her features. But there was now a new, headier version of speaking he might invoke that didn’t involve words at all.

She had leaned forward, lost in some distant memory, the curtain of her unbound hair falling across her face. He closed the gap between them and reached his hand out to brush back the silken veil of her hair. It felt like a thousand different dreams floating across his fingertips. It felt like a forbidden luxury he shouldn’t be allowed to hold.

He swallowed thickly as she looked up at him. He could feel the room disappearing, the feel of water lapping at his ankles. He mustered every ounce of his terrible will to stay steady as he swept the strands up and tucked them behind her ear. He let his fingertips brush the delicate shape of her ear, nothing more than the whisper of a breeze on a spring day. She closed her eyes and tilted her face towards his open palm. She could feel the trembling waves roll through him and held herself away just enough, her cheek hovering a hair’s breadth away from his palm. The heat from his palm radiated out, the warmth spreading out against her cheek. She kept herself still; let him decide if he could meet her the rest of the way.

In slow increments, he leveled his palm against her cheek. His body trembled as cold water crawled up his legs, sloshed around his waist. Her cheek was cold and rotting; it was smooth and warm and delicate. She breathed in deeply, the movement helping him to fight back the memory of dead flesh beneath him. Instead, he focused on the softness of her skin, the ink black sweep of her long lashes. His eyes drifted to the red curve of her mouth, the shape of her lips striking an acute beat of longing into his heart. There was a rushing in his ears that had nothing to do with the memory of the harbor swallowing him up.

He held himself still and felt the water recede back down to his knees. Waited for a wave of nausea to pass before he flicked his eyes up to meet hers. Carefully and measured, so slow he might’ve stepped back easily at any time, she turned her face into his palm and ducked her head down. Her breath ghosted across his skin, the heat of it rendering the memory of cold, drowned corpses inert and impossible. With slow, agonizing care, she pressed her lips onto the wildly beating pulse point at his wrist.

He drew in a sharp breath, could feel the shiver in his spine crawl across every bone in his body. The feel of her skin beneath his fingertips, the heated press of her lips against him - it was too much. It was not enough. There was a heat beneath his skin that the rapidly rising waters around him could not cool.

She stepped away from him, graceful and slow. He was grateful for the space between them. He ached at his inability to cross it easily.  

He dropped his hand and clenched it on the edge of his desk. The room righted itself, the shudders receding into stillness.

He looked over at Inej. Her breathing came in short, quick spurts, her gaze steady and bright. He saw the longing that was thrumming in his veins reflected back at him, a replacement for the melancholy in her eyes from the moment before.

He took a shaky, deep breath before he spoke, wanted to make sure that the sandpaper rasp of his voice was confident and sure.

“The slavers will fear the girl you’ve become. They’ll learn to fear what you can do the way the Barrel bosses fear you now.”

She tilted her head at him, a hint of a smile ghosting across her lips.

“ _You’re_ a Barrel boss, Kaz.”

He nodded.

“I fear you most of all, Inej.” He stared at her intently, his eyes the dark of a moonless night. “It’s terrifying what you do to me.”

She started forward as though to move closer to him, then stopped and held herself in place. He was glad she had. He wished she hadn’t. The space between them was a saving grace and a necessary evil. It was a infuriating in its existence.

“And what do I do to you?”

He wished he could say what she wanted, what she deserved: that she made him a better man. A man made of forgiveness and kindness, one less prone to violence and cruelty.

But he had never lied to her. He wouldn’t start now.

“You make me…,” he began, then faltered. He breathed in deeply. When he spoke, his voice was a low drag of gravel across stone.

“You make me believe.”  

She stepped in towards him and looked up at him, her dark eyes wide and luminous in the moonlight.

“Believe in what, Kaz?”

A shiver ran through him as he met her gaze; his eyes were the still waters of the sea on a cloudy night. He exhaled slowly.

“That miracles can happen to monsters, too.” He reached out and threaded a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, followed the fall of her hair until it met her arm. Trailed his fingertips down the sinewed muscles of her arm, his touch raising goosebumps along her skin. “That there’s still magic in this world.”

Her breath caught and a warmth spread through her chest, as though the words had been an incantation to light her on fire.

She stretched her hand out and trailed the back of her hand lightly across the sharp angle of his jawline. He breathed in sharply but did not turn away, found it in himself not to tremble at her touch.

“Remember that while I’m away, Kaz,” she murmured quietly. She stepped back lightly and turned towards the window. Before she leapt out, she heard Kaz call out to her. She turned to face him, both feet perched on the edge of the windowsill.

“Inej, you’ll - .” He hesitated. A look that was almost nervous flitted across his face. “You’ll send me word - when you can?”

She nodded.

“I will.” She cocked her head and smiled at him. “As often as I can.”

He smiled. Not the crooked, broken bottle slash she’d seen from him before, but one that softened the cruel edges of his mouth and transformed his face. For a moment, she could see the boy he had once been. Could see the man he might have become. She memorized the shape of it and pressed it into the contours of her mind, took one last look at him and leapt from his window.

As she walked back to Wylan’s house, she conjured it up again and again. It was a smile that was an admission and promise rolled into one. A smile she could carry with her on dark, deserted nights.

It was a smile she wouldn’t mind coming home to.


End file.
